Yulia Tymoshenko. Archival photoMOSCOW, April 14Former Prime Minister of Ukraine, leader of the Batkivshchyna party Yulia Tymoshenko called on Western countries to zero out Ukraine's public debt and transfer the frozen funds of the Russian Federation to the country's budget. restructuring of the Ukrainian external debt. As for international organizations — the IMF, the World Bank — the cancellation of these debts,» Tymoshenko said on the air of the Ukrainian Rada TV channel. She also called for the transfer of Russian funds frozen in Western countries to Kiev.Shmygal hopes that Russia's frozen assets will be used for compensationIn early April, Tymoshenko already suggested starting negotiations on the restructuring of Ukraine's external public debt. Then she said that a deferment of payments of 10-20 years is needed. The head of the Accounts Chamber of Ukraine, Valeriy Patskan, also made a request to international financial organizations to revise the debt policy and zero the country's debts. According to him, Ukraine's foreign debt as of March 1 is $57 billion. Western countries have imposed a number of tough anti-Russian sanctions in response to Russia's special operation in Ukraine. Among other things, new sanctions have limited the ability of the Bank of Russia to use gold and foreign exchange reserves in foreign currency. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov estimated that Western countries, as part of sanctions over Ukraine, froze about half, or about $300 billion, of Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserves. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces strike only at the military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops and, as of March 25, they have completed the main tasks of the first stage — they have significantly reduced the combat potential of Ukraine. The main goal in the Russian military department was called the liberation of Donbass.
